Search For Ashya King Moves to Marbella

POLICE were keeping watch outside the Kings’ luxury holiday apartment near the Costa del Sol resort of Estepona near Marbella today, as the search for Ashya King moves to Marbella

Two Civil Guard patrol cars with two uniformed officers in each spent the morning parked up outside the gated private estate overlooking the Med where Brett King and his wife Naghmeh own a first-floor flat.

Around midday one of the vehicles moved down the road to make sure it could block off cars coming in from a nearby main road.

One-bed apartments in the 69-apartment block, which boasts two swimming pools set in landscaped gardens and stunning views of Gibraltar and on a clear day Morocco, are worth around 380,000€

Two-bed apartments fetch around 570,000€

Mr and Mrs King, who were last seen in the French port of Cherbourg in Normandy at 8pm on Thursday, are understood to have bought the property 10 years ago when it was still being built.

The whitewashed apartment block isn’t thought to have been completed until 2008.

There was no answer from the intercom buzzer on the outside of the block, sandwiched between the sea and the N340 dual-carriageway which runs along the coast.

There was no sign either of the grey Hyundai people carrier they are believed to be travelling in with their seven children including Ashya, five, after smuggling him out of Southampton General Hospital where he was being treated for a brain tumour.

The few neighbours who responded said they didn’t have any information and weren’t able to help.

Spanish police confirmed they had been alerted and were looking for the family.

A source at Spain’s National Police, which manages Europol alerts, said: “We have received an alert about the family and are actively trying to locate them.

“One of the areas we are focusing on is the Costa del Sol because we know they own property there and have friends in the area.”

Mr Brett, a Jehovah’s Witness like his wife, is still registered as the sole director of a Marbella-based real estate firm.

Its registered address is believed to be a lawyer’s office and no-one could be reached there today.

SPAIN’S National Police tonight/last night (SAT) appealed on Twitter for the public’s help in tracing the King family – saying they believed they were in hiding on the Costa del Sol.

Officers asked members of the public to dial 091 – the equivalent of 999 – if they saw them.

It tweeted on its official police site in Spanish: “On the Costa del Sol, family with six children, one of them needing urgent medical treatment which his parents are denying him. If you see them, phone us.”

Around the same time it posted another Tweet alongside a photo of sick Ashya King next to his mum Naghmeh which read: “Attention #Malaga #Marbella. We’re looking for a family from the UK. The parents are denying medical treatment to a child that needs it.”